Archive for November, 2006

Wine & Chocolate Pairing

Andrea Immer Robinson is one of my personal idols, so I take her food and wine pairing recommendations seriously. One of the pairings she raves about in her book, Great Tastes Made Simple, is Madeira with Chocolate. I have also heard her strongly encourage this pairing at both the appearances I have seen her make [...]

I.S.O. the world’s best chocolate

Now that winter is near, it’s getting to be prime chocolate time.?Ǭ† Chocolate is a wonderful food all on its own, but is wonderful with fortified wine as a little after-dinner snack.?Ǭ† In the spirit of winter, my next several articles will be on chocolate and wine. Over the past several months, I have discovered [...]

Election ’06 Update

In case those of you outside the area were wondering, here are the results for the 3 election races that had candidates endorsed by this blog: Hillary Clinton won a resounding victory for U.S. Senator from NY. 67% of the vote! Eric Massa conceded to Republican Randy Kuhl one week after the election. It was [...]

Ravines Sets Standard

Last month, I paid a visit to the quaint yet elegant tasting room of Ravines Wine Cellars. Ravines is a boutique Finger Lakes winery run by husband and wife team Morton and Lisa Hallgren. Morton trained as a winemaker in France and was head winemaker at Dr. Frank’s for several years. Lisa is a gourmet [...]

Bad Service Alert

I like to believe that although I think about wine most of the day each day, I’m not a wine snob. But certain, shall we say, wine faux pas, really irk me from time to time. A business colleague and I had lunch a few weeks ago at Edgar’s Restaurant in the Belhurst Castle in [...]

PS Brock Endorses Clinton, Massa, Martini in ’06 Election

Anyone running for office in New York shouldn’t shy away from photo ops with New York wine. Earlier in the year, the staff of the NYWCC had a long, back-and-forth discussion about an impending visit by Governor George Pataki. Should his speech be in the beautiful, well-appointed tasting room, or in the more staid demonstration [...]

Politics and Wine

In the NYWCC tasting room, we featured Hermann J. Wiemer dry Riesling 2005, Finger Lakes, during the month of October as part of our Gold Medal Month. The wine won the coveted Governor’s Cup, best overall NY wine in the New York Wine & Food Classic Competition. One of our tasting room visitors asked me [...]